Friday, June 4, 2010

Since we were just talking about the beaded pattern couching, I have been meaning to give away my extra copy of the March/April Needlepoint Now that I received when we switched to a post office box this year. My copy took so long to be forwarded from the street address I thought it was lost, and NP Now sent me a replacement. (Thanks, Elizabeth!) Naturally three weeks after the replacement issue arrived the original showed up with stickers all over it as it was shunted here and there.

I'm going to give my extra copy away to a random person who comments on this blog article. So post a comment and I'll pick a number based on the first, second, third, etc. person who comments. If Blog won't let you comment, don't worry, you can still enter the drawing. Just email me at chilly hollowat hotmail dot com and I'll include you.

You don't need to give me your mailing address or anything, just write a comment and post it or email it to me. I'll announce the winner Sunday to give everyone a chance to read this blog posting. The winner can then let me know where to mail the copy.

Good luck!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

The little Melissa Shirley mermaid's bullion curls are all finished, and I've added a length of holographic Kreinik to make a hair clasp, soit is time to attach the canvas to the canvas purse I bought. Because the purse is such thick canvas and the needlepoint piece is small, I decided to attach it to the pocket of the purse with glue. So I laid the canvas upside down on a piece of waxed paper and using my Aileen's Tacky Glue, I ran a bead of glue all around the outside edge of my stitching. With a toothpick, I smoothed out blobs so that every part of the outside margin of the stitching had glue on it in a smooth layer. Then it dried all day. That evening I cut out the canvas at the glued edge, one thread from the stitching, using my regular scissors (not my embroidery scissors--NP canvas is too tough on them).

Then I put glue on the pocket and along the back side of the needlepoint at the edge. Carefully aligning the canvas to the pocket, I put the needlepoint on and pressed down hard. Then I put a skinny book inside the pocket and put more books on top of the pocket so the glued needlepoint was pressed down hard to dry.

Once the purse dried overnight, I removed the books and checked how everything looked. As I'd suspected the one thread I cut outside of that wasn't stitched showed on the top and bottom of the needlepoint, but not on the sides. On the sides the pocket trim hide the raw edge. This is easy to fix, however. I just strung enough of my lemon-lime green beads to cover the top on waxed thread, then glued the line of beads along the top and a second string along the bottom of the canvas, hiding the raw edge. Trim is wonderful!

Here's the final result, which is all wrapped and boxed up ready to mail to the Birthday Girl. Note the glass heart attached to the zipper pull in the two last photos. That was an added touch, something I picked up on sale at the local crafts emporium to fancy up the purse even more. Many thanks to Melissa Shirley for allowing me to post photos of her design here as I stitched like the wind to finish it in time for the Big Day!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow